I discovered a problem with our ORACLE.C module while working on ITEMSEQ.  If you use bind variables in an SQL statement (e.g. an INSERT statement), our call to OEXEC hangs indefinitely.  At first, I was concerned that the problem existed only in LISP.  But I wrote a small C program that called ORACLE.C directly, and it exhibited exactly the same behaviour.  It made no difference whether blocking was turned on or off.  When turned off, OEXEC always returns the 'would block' error code.  I am stumped as to why this behaviour occurs.  Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that we are using the old, old, old, OCI interface.  Oracle may no longer support that interface.  Bind variables do seem to work for queries.